Installation

The Linear remote garage door is fairly easy to install. Anyone should to be able to complete the installation in less than 30 minutes. Unlike many other types of smart home devices, it doesn't replace existing hardware. This device attaches to the existing mechanical garage door opener. This model only work with basic push button garage door openers that don't rely on digital signals. Most older garage door openers use a push button to momentarily short the circuit to activate the opener. Newer openers may use proprietary digital signals that require manufacture specific devices. Before purchasing one of these devices, check your garage door opener is not using digital signals.

I'm always amaze the range of software development problems that the Interface data type can solve. Anytime there is need to refactor code, the first thing that typically needs to be accomplished is extract interfaces from classes. Once the dependent classes are referenced by interfaces, they can be mocked and unit testing is possible. While performing the extraction of interfaces on legacy code, I found a useful side benefit.

There are plenty of web site that aren't taken advantage of wide screen LCD monitors that are becoming standard. Typically, these websites are using a fixed-pixel-width layout that doesn't expand with a larger browser window size. My current WordPress theme is a great example of a fixed-width layout design. Expand the browser to full screen on a 1920x1080 monitor and over half of the page is empty white space. This reminds me of watching older 4:3 aspect TV shows on a wide screen TV. The problem will only get worse as the resolution of monitors increase.

I started to play with the on-demand cloud service offered by Rackspace. A few years back they started a venture called Mosso to develop cloud technologies. Earlier this year, Rackspace incorporated Mosso cloud services into their standard offerings. I was able to have a web-accessible dedicated server within minutes. You can have any OS preloaded, as long it is a major Linux distribution. Customer accounts are charged on a hourly basis for each server that is online. It does not cost much to load some servers for experimentation. I would encourage you to give it a try at http://www.rackspacecloud.com.